


A Cup of Sugar

by littledust



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-09
Updated: 2012-12-09
Packaged: 2017-11-20 17:46:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledust/pseuds/littledust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1963 in the Xavier mansion's kitchen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Cup of Sugar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [winterhill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterhill/gifts).



> I adore domesticity, so writing this was truly a treat. Happy holidays, dear recipient!

_1\. Challah (Erik) -- January_

It takes a few months for the dust to settle after Cuba. Erik recognizes himself as the source of much of the tension, a living reminder of the pain they endured. Charles's wheelchair attests to the pain he inflicted. Erik reshapes the Xavier mansion according to Hank's designs and tells himself that when the renovations are done, he'll leave the accusatory glares and heavy silences.

(He'll leave the weight of Charles's gaze, more anguished than angered, and the emptiness of an unshared bed.)

Renovations to the kitchen come last, in part because Charles rarely uses the room and in part because it's Erik's favorite room in the house. The two facts have nothing to do with one another--Erik actually enjoys cooking, and someone needs to keep a houseful of mutants and one stubborn human fed while they argue with various government institutions and try not to burn the house down. Those first few months, the only real conversations he has are with Angel, who is also trying to make amends.

"You need to make him something special," Angel says to him one day after Erik, driven half out of his mind by the bitter chill keeping all of them inside and on top of each other, says something carelessly cutting to Charles.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Erik replies, but he opens the cupboard without touching it. He completed the renovations weeks ago as the others got swept up in holiday preparations. The idea of a new year in January still seems strange to Erik, but he thinks of fresh starts all the same as he beats eggs and honey and flour and oil together.

"Erik," Charles says hours later, "what's this?"

"Challah," Erik says. "I thought you might want to try a slice."

Charles touches the loaf, still warm from the oven. "It looks like it's been braided." He looks up at Erik, and there are shadows under his eyes, new lines from pain and worry, but his eyes still light up when he smiles. "It must have taken quite some time."

"I've had more time as of late," Erik says, looking away from Charles as he cuts a slice and lays it on a small plate. "I've been thinking about your idea for a school. It wouldn't take much more work to install some chalkboards and so on."

Charles takes the plate. "You'll teach a few classes, of course."

"I might," Erik allows. He still can't look at Charles.

This time, when Charles reaches out it's to take Erik's hand. "I loved the challah. Thank you."

 

_2\. Pastel de Tres Leches (Angel) -- February_

"Licking the spoon doesn't really count as doing the dishes," Angel says, fishing the oven mitts out of the drawer and laughing at the face Raven makes in reciprocation.

"I have to keep myself from wasting away while you make the most complicated dessert of all time," Raven says, swinging her legs from her position on the kitchen counter. "What's it called again?"

"Pastel de tres leches," Angel answers. She opens the oven and pulls the cake pan out. It smells perfect, all vanilla and warmth and _home_. "It's a family recipe. My mother used to make it all the time." She has to swallow at the sudden lump in her throat, the unexpected longing for the home she left five years ago. That place had one violent man too many, so she traded it for more men and more violence, repeating the cycle with every attempt to escape.

No one here has tried to hurt her (not since she left Shaw's group on the beach, not since she promised she was on their side again), but Angel's not fooling herself. Her lot is with violent men. At least these seem able to control themselves.

Raven hops off the counter and pokes her in the side with the clean handle of the spoon. "Whatever you're thinking, stop it." Her smile is a small flash of white in the blue of her face. "Everyone's gonna love your Spanish cake, no matter how long it takes to make."

"Mexican," Angel corrects, passing Raven a can opener. "Can I trust you to open the condensed milk?"

Raven eyes it doubtfully. "Uh."

"How are you still alive?"

"My natural good looks."

Raven keeps Angel company as she whisks the cream syrup and then pours it over the cake. The conversation starts light, touching on the recent snowstorm and their mutual need for new gloves, before moving on to various trips they've taken. Raven has been to so many different countries, and her face lights up as she describes them, accent changing as she names each foreign place. Angel's stories are smaller, the road trip to Las Vegas she took with some friends in high school and their failure to get into any of the casinos, and her move to Los Angeles, where she lived in an apartment so small she barely had room to cook.

"Where's your mom now?" Raven asks, dipping a finger into the whipped topping Angel just finished.

"Probably still with my stepfather," Angel says, voice as tight as her grip on the spatula as she spreads the topping on the cake, now soaked in cream syrup. "I'm afraid to call her. What would I say?"

"That you're in school," Raven answers. She cocks her head, catching her lower lip between her teeth. "That you're happy."

Angel puts the spatula back in the bowl, then puts both in the sink and fills them with water. Washing things, keeping them clean, now that's a simple task. After she turns off the tap, she clears her throat and says, "Maybe." She turns to face Raven, still the picture of hesitation, and offers her a small smile. "Let's have some cake."

 

_3\. Macaroni and Cheese (Sean) -- March_

Sean will be the first to admit that he's not a great chef, not even close, but he still enjoys his turn at cooking for the team, or the family, or whatever they are. He's memorized how to make a few simple dishes well enough even to meet Erik and Angel's standards, and he stands by the universal appeal of macaroni and cheese.

Also, cooking dinner means a trip into town for groceries, and there's this girl at the grocery store. Sean still hasn't managed to learn her name, but she has long dark hair she wears in a braid, and she asked his name the first time he shopped there and greets him by name every time she rings up his groceries. Sean is pretty sure that she goes to the local high school.

"Three kinds of cheese, check," Sean says. "Just need the milk, and then..." He risks a glance over to the girl, who smiles when she sees him looking and waves. "Someday," Sean says, heaving a tragic sigh.

Sometimes he gets strange looks for talking to himself, but it helps Sean remember things. Besides, he might as well enjoy the freedom now that he has enough control over his powers to no longer worry about blowing out the occasional window by accident.

Sean piles everything in the cart, double checks to make sure he has the money Charles gave him for the trip, goes back to the sweets aisle to add a few candy bars, then wheels his cart to the checkout aisle.

"Hi, Sean," chirps the girl of his dreams, as she always does. "How are you today?"

"Pretty good," Sean answers, because he really can't tell her, _So, my friend came back from the dead a few days ago, because it turns out that his genetic mutation means he basically can't die and he just spent the past six months floating in a cloud of dust. By the way, would you like to come over for dinner? It's on me._ He takes the groceries out of the cart and stacks them as neatly as he can. Don't girls notice things like that?

Not that he can tell if she's noticed or not, because he's busy staring at his feet. He really should have put on nicer shoes than sneakers, but then Raven would have asked. She always notices things like that.

"That's good," she replies over the beeping of the machine as she rings up each item. She tells him the total and when Sean hands over the money, their fingers brush.

"Sorry," Sean mumbles, mortified.

"Don't worry about it." Their fingers brush again when she hands back his change, and her smile is as bright as ever. "Have a nice day!"

Feeling emboldened for some reason, Sean swallows and manages to ask, "By the way, what's your name?"

"Erica. Erica McGill," she-- _Erica_ \--says. "Have a nice day! Um, I guess I already said that."

"I guess I will," Sean says, beaming as he gathers up his grocery bags.

 

_4\. Toast (Raven) -- April_

The kitchen is only on fire a little bit, which is an improvement over the last time Raven tried her hand at cooking. 

"You're lucky we've all gotten handy with a fire extinguisher," Charles says, directing another blast of foam at the toaster.

"Like you have any room to talk," Raven says and tosses the singed towel into the trash with a sigh. "I remember Oxford _and_ the fire department _and_ you flirting outrageously with that fireman."

"It was hardly outrageously--"

"You got a little splash of water on your sleeve and insisted that you had to take off your shirt!"

"Well," Charles says, which Raven knows is all the concession she's going to get. He sets down the fire extinguisher and wraps her in a hug. She sits on his lap to hug him back, which is all the admission _he's_ going to get that yes, she was scared over this stupid little kitchen fire. It's really Charles who should fear fire after the terrible one years ago, but it's Raven whose blood freezes at the memory of smoke.

Raven lays her head on his shoulder and echoes, "Well."

Charles's arms tighten around her a little. "I'm rather tired of this season of mud," he says, which means he's caught the edge of her thoughts again. Charles always talks of weather when there's any sort of elephant in the room; Raven thinks it's something to do with being British.

"Yeah, it would be nice to go outside without getting covered in mud." Raven gives Charles a final squeeze and steps away, wincing at the large singe mark the toaster left on the wall. "Erik is going to murder us."

"Us? What did I do?"

"I'll tell him you were my accomplice and he'll believe me."

"I should hardly think that would be the case when he's--" Charles begins, then cuts himself off, twin spots of color rising in his cheeks. For someone with his long and storied history of sleeping with co-eds, Charles is still an easy blusher.

"Sleeping with you," Raven finishes with an arch of her eyebrows, daring him to contradict her.

He doesn't. "When did you figure it out?"

"Months ago. You know that I don't care as long as you're happy. I just don't understand how you can be happy with the man who hurt you like this, and I'm not just talking about the chair." Charles winces and Raven regrets getting up. She leans over and laces her fingers through his, establishing another point of connection. "Just say the word and I'll destroy him."

"This is an awful lot to take in before breakfast," says Charles. Then, with a glance at the clock: "Or brunch, more like."

"Just this once," Raven says. "Needed to be said. Let's see if I can hard boil an egg."

 

_5\. PBJ (Scott) -- May_

Living in the Xavier mansion is nice but confusing. There are books and Hank made Scott some special glasses and Alex is here and he smiles and he doesn't break things anymore, so this is still the best place Scott has ever lived. It's just that the house creaks at night and all the grown-ups keep calling it a school, even though it's not a school, it's a _mansion_.

Scott feels kind of grouchy after losing one of his favorite marbles under a bush. It was silly to try to play outside and everyone was too busy to play with him _anyway_. Charles and Erik are finding another mutant, Raven and Angel are in New York City buying things, Hank is in his lab, Alex and Darwin are still fixing one of the showers, and Sean is off somewhere. It's lunchtime and Scott is still stuck by himself.

Maybe Alex and Darwin will play with him if he brings them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Cheered by this thought, Scott takes the ingredients out of the pantry and then climbs on a chair to reach the plates. By the time he's scraping peanut butter across a third slice of bread, he's feeling happy enough to hum "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." The next time they show _The Wizard of Oz_ on television, he'll be able to watch it after knowing all of the songs for years. It was one of the only records they had at the shelter.

He's just cut the sandwiches into triangles when Alex and Darwin come laughing downstairs and into the kitchen. Alex does what he always does whenever he first sees Scott, which is pick him up in a giant bear hug and mess up his hair. "Didn't realize how late it was getting, buddy," Alex says.

"It's okay," Scott says, pushing Alex's hand away in token protest. "I made sandwiches. Do you want to play marbles after lunch?"

"We can even play ball if you want," Alex says. "I asked Angel to see if she could find you a Cubs cap anywhere in New York. We gotta get you rooting for the right team."

"Man, you are in for a lifetime of disappointment," Darwin says, shaking his head. "You're gonna inflict that on your brother, too?"

"You told me you grew up watching the Dodgers."

"Yeah, I never said he should root for _my_ team."

"But not the Yankees," Scott says, tentative because he's good at remembering facts, but baseball is still new to him.

"Never the Yankees," Alex affirms as Darwin makes a face. "And thanks for the sandwiches, buddy."

Scott beams. "I'll go get my baseball glove!"

 

_6\. Chocolate Chip Cookies (Hank) -- June_

"We didn't do anything for Mother's Day," Raven says.

Hank uses the handle of his spoon to push up his glasses. "I wasn't aware you thought of yourself as our mother."

"Well, I definitely don't think of _Charles_ as a father," Raven replies. "Or Erik, for good measure."

"Hush, children," Moira says, swatting Raven's hand away from the cookie dough. "If anyone's the team mother, it's me, and I would prefer to be the eccentric aunt. It's more literary." In violation of her gesture to Raven, Moira dips a finger in the cookie dough and samples the result. "But feel free to make up an eccentric aunt's day and bake me this recipe for it. Hank, what's your secret?"

"Precision in measuring, mixing, and timing," Hank says, flushing as every eye in the kitchen turns toward him. He shouldn't be nervous, not after Angel took one look at his grandmother's chocolate chip cookie recipe and asked if she could copy it down, but he sets foot in the kitchen and a piece of his past still says _for women only_ even after years of cooking for himself at the CIA, even after months of living in the most unconventional household in the United States, if not the entire world. "If you would be kind enough to assist me in portioning the dough without tasting too much of it, ladies."

Raven rolls her eyes and takes a deliberate bite of her first spoonful, but then relents, dropping sticky balls of dough on the cookie trays. Hank gives her what he hopes is an apologetic smile when she catches him looking. It seems he's apologizing to everyone lately; the cookies are meant to express his understanding of the relationship Charles and Erik share, if not his approval. (Erik paralyzed Charles, which is Charles's sin to forgive, but Hank can't forget, not after spending months redesigning the house. Hank would feel that way even were Erik a woman., or so he tells himself whenever they come to breakfast together.)

After the last spoonful of dough hits the tray, Hank checks the oven thermometer and then slides the trays in, clicking on his stopwatch after he closes the door. Next time he'll wear his lab coat in the kitchen. He has the feeling that Moira at the very least would find it amusing, like a white chef's apron gone wrong. He mentions the idea, and sure enough, Moira laughs, and so does Angel, and Raven--Raven smiles and hides the smile behind her hand. Her _blue_ hand.

Hank still has far to go when it comes to making up last October to her, but at least there seems some slight possibility of it ever happening here in the warmth of the kitchen.

 

_7\. Hamburgers (Alex) -- July_

The Fourth of July dawns a deep and threatening gray, yet all it takes it one perfectly timed complaint from Alex and the sun breaks through the clouds by early afternoon, much to his satisfaction. It pays to have a little weather mutant on your team.

"I suppose we'll have to become meteorology experts next," Charles observes, staring up at the deep blue sky.

"The clouds are happier over that way," Ororo says, waving her arm toward the east. "They haven't rained over there in a while."

Alex, in front of a lit grill so hot his shirt is already sticking to him and already filthy from a quick game of football, can't keep the triumphant grin from his face. "I'd believe the little one. The clouds are happier, we're happier, it all works out."

"Mysteriously," Charles says dryly, but offers no further comment.

Alex wipes the sweat from his forehead with a swipe of his hand and flips over the burgers, stomach growling at the smell. He skipped breakfast to go on an emergency grocery store run since he sort of ate the last ice cream bars and Sean just wanted to say hi to that girl that someday he'll realize has a huge thing for him. Then he had to skip lunch because Scotty wanted to learn how to play football in his new indestructible glasses, and the kid is not bad at hustling a football down a makeshift field, plus Alex has like twelve years of being a shitty older brother to make up. The only downside to all this is that Alex is ready to eat his own arm as he grills the hamburgers.

"I can't wait to eat you," he mutters to the meat. It sizzles in response.

"Lemonade?"

Alex turns to find Raven, blue-skinned and beaming, holding a tray of lemonades so cold that condensation has gathered on the glass. "You are a goddess," he informs her, accepting one.

"I'll remember that," she replies, half in jest and half in warning.

Alex makes a face at her, which she makes right back, and tosses back the glass of lemonade. Later he'll have to bust out the beer to make this a real Fourth of July. He's legal; Charles can't complain about _setting an example_.

His stomach growls once more, and Alex flips a burger experimentally. "Burgers are done!" he yells, scooping up the first and slapping it on a plate. "Hot dogs are next!"

Surprisingly, Ororo is the first of the kids to pop up at his elbow, although Scotty isn't far behind. "I would like a hamburger _and_ a hotdog because moving clouds makes me hungry and also Erik says you owe me one," Ororo informs him, her face serious.

Alex grabs her a plate with a hamburger already made. "You gotta eat the whole thing before you ask for a hotdog, okay? You don't want to get sick and miss the fireworks. Plus, you know Moira is gonna make us eat salad."

"Ew," Ororo says. They share a nose wrinkle in solidarity.

" _I_ like salad," Scotty offers, because Alex loves his little brother, but the kid is about as straitlaced as they come. Whatever keeps him out of trouble.

"Go tell everybody else to get it while it's hot," Alex says, and grins when the two kids sprint across the lawn. The is the first Fourth of July he hasn't worried about accidentally lighting the grill on fire, and damn, it's a good feeling.

 

_8\. Fruit Salad (Ororo) -- August_

Ororo thinks _ice, ice, ice_ and holds herself perfectly still, like she's frozen to her stool. Angel reaches over and tugs on the end on one of her curls, smile so warm that Ororo melts in spite of herself. "Just don't make it too cold in here, _mi cielo_. It's a nice change from the humidity, but I still like the feel of summer."

"Okay," Ororo says, beaming. Angel told her when she asked that _mi cielo_ means _my sky_ in Spanish, which is another way of talking, like Masri or English, except when you say it in Spanish, it's a way of saying that someone is special to you. Ororo loves the name because it fits her best, so well that Angel promised not to use it for anybody else, not even the new girl that Charles and Erik are picking up right now. (Ororo is excited for a new girl, but part of her wonders if everyone will like her better.)

"When it comes to knives in the kitchen, a sharp one is safer than a dull one," Angel explains, picking up a small knife and turning it over in her hands, showing Ororo the edge. "Luckily, with Erik around, we don't have to worry about dull knives. I'm going to teach you how to cut fruit today because I trust you to only use knives with a grown-up. Understand?"

Ororo sits up as straight as she can, ponytail bobbing against her neck with the force of her nods. Angel smiles and continues, "Okay, I'm going to show you how to slice strawberries." She cuts slowly around the stem of the strawberry until it comes off, voice as slow and gentle as her hands as she explains. Ororo leans forward, forgetting to think of ice. She's concentrating so fiercely that she starts when Angel leans over and turns the fan on with a click.

"Sorry," Ororo says.

"No worries. It shows me that you're serious about fruit salad," Angel says with a laugh. "How about you keep slicing those strawberries while I do the pineapple? Coring one of those is hard for little fingers."

When she starts, Ororo isn't as fast as Angel, even slowed down for teaching. After a few strawberries and one botched attempt Angel says she can eat, Ororo finds a rhythm, the knife tapping against the cutting board as she cuts off the tops and then slices the strawberries in half. Everyone will eat the fruit salad, even Alex, who has funny ideas about food sometimes. Maybe Charles and Erik will come home today with the new girl. Maybe she'll eat the fruit salad and she'll ask for the recipe and Ororo will show her how to make it and they'll be best friends.

"Looks like the haze is burning off," Angel observes, glancing out the window. She picks up her neat slices of pineapple and places them in a bowl, reaching for the cantaloupe. "Want to talk about what was bothering you?"

"I want the new girl to like me but I don't want everybody to like her more," Ororo admits, eating another strawberry because it's the last one and she can.

"It takes a lot of fruits to make a salad," Angel says, bumping her shoulder against Ororo's. "Know what I mean, jellybean?"

Ororo looks down at the cutting board, stained pink with strawberry juice, and smiles. "Yeah."

 

_9\. Chocolate Cake (Moira) -- September_

"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you! Happy birthday, dear Darwin, happy birthday to you!"

After the last off-key note of the birthday song fades, Moira brings out the cake, twenty-three candles burning brightly. "Better wish for something good with all these candles," she says, depositing the cake in front of a grinning Darwin.

"But don't tell anyone what it is!" Ororo reminds him at top volume.

"I won't," Darwin assures her, and blows out the candles in one breath to raucous cheers.

"A little bird told me you like chocolate, so that's chocolate cake under the chocolate frosting. There are three layers separated by strawberry jam," Moira explains, shooing away Erik when he attempts to cut the cake. Give a man dominion over magnetism and he'll insist on handling anything to do with metal.

Darwin edges the cake plate toward him. "Forget the rest of you, I'm gonna eat this all by myself. I won't even get a stomachache."

"Is that true?" Hank asks, immediately interested. "It follows to reason, given the nature of your mutation."

"Let the man eat his birthday cake, which smells lovely, if I may say," Charles says, wheeling himself closer for an appreciative sniff. "The spirit of scientific inquiry waits for nothing save a man's appetite. Say nothing, Raven."

Raven does enough significant eyebrow raising to convey the intended innuendo anyway. Moira laughs as she cuts the cake and doesn't bother turning it into a cough when Charles casts her a mournful look. Ganging up on him with Raven is _fun_ , rather like playing the older sister to the pair of siblings. She does her self-appointed status as the eccentric aunt to think of, after all.

The volume in the kitchen only increases as everyone passes around plates heaped with generous slices of cake. Moira hands Scott a plate of just the candles and he shyly offers the first to Jean before turning to Ororo, who manages to lick the frosting off three at once. The so-called grown-ups (though Moira feels about ten years older than all of them) keep talking louder and louder to compensate for their tendency to talk over one another, and the kitchen is a contended din.

"This cake is amazing," Darwin tells Moira with a vigorous handshake. "So delicious you can't bake this for anyone ever again, because anyone else will die trying to fit the entire cake in his mouth."

"No way, your mutation means you can enter any hot dog eating contest you want!" Sean yells through Angel and Erik's involved discussion of second language acquisition and something to do with alcohol. "Next summer, you and me, man!"

"What is it with teenage boys and trying to cram objects inside the human mouth, anyway?" Moira wonders aloud, grinning when Darwin coughs on a forkful of cake.

Before partaking of her own slice, Moira wraps up the rest of the cake and puts it in the refrigerator, the better for the younger ones to fight over tomorrow. Things have finally quieted down a little since Sean just shouted loud enough to shatter Hank's glass, but the entire kitchen still smells like chocolate and sounds like celebration.

 

_10\. Applesauce (Jean) -- October_

"We're back from the apple place!" Ororo bellows, throwing open the doors with a gust of wind. Jean winces, but their arms _are_ too full with bags of apples to open the doors.

"The orchard," Scott corrects her, following behind. Jean brings up the rear, and they deposit their heaping paper bags of apples on the kitchen table, where Erik awaits them.

"Erik!" Ororo cries, giggling in delight when he scoops her up in greeting. "We picked so many apples! Raven has more and she's getting them out of the car!"

"We'll have plenty for applesauce and more besides, then," Erik says, tapping her nose with one long finger. The smile he directs toward Scott and Jean is less guarded but no less warm for all that. If Jean closed her eyes, she could feel it, warm as her necklace after being worn all day.

She keeps her eyes open. Erik doesn't like telepathy, even though he loves Charles, and she thinks he likes her, but she doesn't _know_ because the inside of his head is frightening, and, well--Jean knows something about secrets that need to stay that way.

There's a hand on her shoulder. "I can teach you how to pare an apple if you don't know how," Scott offers. His mind says _you look sad_ and _affection_ and _reassurance_. It's simple, like adding two and two and two to get six. Jean smiles her thanks.

"I already know how," she says in response to Erik's faint, incredulous query. "My mom taught me how. I've made applesauce before." The memory sits bittersweet on her memory, the sound of her mother's voice a counterweight to the discordant note of _what's wrong with my daughter_ underneath. Most of her memories are like that.

It's why she's here.

Ororo lightens the mood just by being seven years old. She makes up a song about apple picking as they all wind spirals of apple peel into the trash can. When Ororo pauses, clearly struggling for a rhyme with "orchard," Jean offers, "On a ladder we climb upward." There's no need to read Ororo's mind; her grateful happiness lights her face. Jean hums in the back of her throat. She likes poetry.

"We will be using brown sugar in this recipe variation, because it's better that way. Anyone who says otherwise is telling terrible lies," Erik says, coring three apples despite having only one knife in his hands. Jean has seen him wield far more knives in the kitchen before, but between the four of them, they've run out of cutting boards.

_I wonder,_ Jean thinks, and picks up her own paring knife without the use of her hands.

Paring an apple with telekinesis is more difficult than paring it the normal way (the human way, Erik would say), but not by much. Jean frowns in concentration as the knife slips against the skin, shaving off a small piece instead of her normal long whorl.

"Think of your mutation as its own entity," Erik says after a moment. "It's not another pair of hands, just as telepathy does not function as another set of ears. Let it be a part of yourself instead of a poor substitute for something else."

Jean curves her fingers up and then spins them around slowly, mimicking one of Erik's most frequent gestures, and the rest of the apple peel drops into the trash. "Well done," Erik says, and Jean lifts another apple with her mind.

 

_11\. Turkey (Darwin) -- November_

"Please, for the love of God, someone tell me why I am in charge of the turkey," Darwin despairs for the third time in probably, oh, the past ten minutes.

"Because the only other American I trust in the kitchen is Angel, and she's in charge of every dessert," Erik grits out. For a man who loves to cook, Erik gets testy in the kitchen. Erik gets testy everywhere except when he's teaching, where he wears a shit-eating grin as he makes everyone's life one hell of a learning experience. Emphasis on the "hell."

Right now the kitchen feels like one of the circles of hell, though not any of the ones with ice or water, if Darwin remembers his Dante correctly. Maybe this is another flaming tomb for heretics. Before Darwin can extend the metaphor to ruminate on damnation in America, Angel thrusts a pie tin into his hands and says, "For the love of God, wash this when you have time. The blueberry pie tastes _off_ and I need another pumpkin one to compensate."

"Not blueberry season," Erik grunts from the table, where he's doing something horribly complicated-looking with several whisks.

Angel whirls on him. "If _someone_ could be trusted to run a simple _grocery_ errand--"

"I had to un-dent the car after that shopping trip! Why has everyone in this godforsaken country lost their mind over this wretched holiday?"

"Wretched holiday, sure, but I know some potato peelers with little ears," Darwin says, nodding toward the folding table currently serving as their secondary preparation table. Jean, Ororo, and Scott, knives in hand (or not, in Jean's case), are watching the discussion with round eyes.

"My ears are normal size, I like to think," Charles says, putting down a potato to demonstrate. Raven, also relegated to potato peeler, shifts her ears to three times their normal size and then wiggles them at Angel, whose face had fallen after Darwin mentioned fighting in front of kids. Now it's back to the regular smiling-but-harried expression she gets in the process of cooking big meals.

"The turkey smells good," Erik says grudgingly. "So does the second pumpkin pie."

"I haven't even put it in the oven yet," Angel says, laughing. "But thanks."

Darwin exchanges an amused glance with Alex, who has been put in charge of chopping vegetables "until he can identify all of them by name," according to Erik. Maybe he'll give his mother a call later today, or maybe he'll save it until Christmas. The big family holidays make her sentimental enough that they can get in a few minutes of conversation before she starts telling him to change his unnatural ways. It is what it is, and Darwin made his peace with it a few years ago. Like all old scars, it only aches sometimes.

He's glad for this, though, gladder than he can ever say that he has another family right here in this kitchen. This family's ways couldn't possibly get more unnatural, and it suits Darwin just fine. He can adapt to survive, sure, but here he doesn't have to adapt at all.

 

_12\. Chicken Noodle Soup (Charles) -- December_

Only true love would lead Charles to tempt the fates so many times. The first complication was convincing Angel that some of her chicken stock could be left in his admittedly cooking-inept hands, and he had to explain what he wanted it for before she would even consider it. Charles can't do much in the kitchen, but he can do a simple broth, thank you very much.

Then, after making the chicken noodle soup while fending off ravening hordes of teenage boys, Charles has to face the most monumental challenge of all: getting Erik to admit that he's sick enough to _need_ soup. The man is pale, glassy-eyed, clammy with sweat, and has to brace himself against the countertop, for goodness' sake.

"I'm going to make dinner for everyone. Possibly that brisket," Erik insists, then breaks into a prolonged fit of horrible coughing. Charles fetches him a glass of water and wonders if he's a terrible person for finding small consolation in the idea that Erik can be vulnerable outside their bedroom. Even if he's too stubborn to admit it.

"You slept through dinner, remember?" Charles asks. "Angel used the brisket to make something for the rest of us. I can't remember what it was called, but it was delicious. _You_ are going to eat an entire bowl of this soup, made with tender loving care by yours truly, and then go to bed, where I will join you if you promise not to breathe in my direction."

Erik looks from the glass of water in one hand to the steaming bowl of soup next to him. Charles considers a mental nudge for the sake of his health, but all that he's projecting right now is bleary confusion. "I don't remember how I got downstairs," Erik says, almost conversationally. "Where did you learn how to make soup?"

"For Raven, when we were kids," Charles says. "Observation does seem to correlate your theory that her natural blue form is much stronger than whatever guise she assumes. Regardless of the cause, she got sick a lot. I wanted to learn, so our housekeeper showed me. First and last time I ever demonstrated any talent in this particular area."

"Maybe a little," Erik mutters to the soup, and manages to upset his water all over the floor in the process of reaching for the spoon.

"Don't worry about it. Eat," Charles says. "Water dries and the children probably won't slip on the floor at this hour of the night."

Erik has his face so close to his meal that it's practically in the bowl, but Charles thinks he can make out a, "Good." Charles wheels himself closer and places a hand on the small of his back, eyes closed. Yes, they're the only ones awake at this hour, and every mind in the house, including Erik's, says _warmth_ and _sleep_ and _comfort_. After a few minutes, Erik sets bowl and spoon in the sink, even in his delirium able to maintain a tidy kitchen and then find Charles's hand to hold.

"Let's go to bed," Charles says.


End file.
